Byju’s standalone loss surges to ₹2,702.14 cr in FY21

The K-12 (kindergarten to class 12) offering of Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, the parent company of edtech giant Byju's, contributed more than half to its consolidated loss during the financial year 2020-21. Despite Covid curbs keeping most young students at home, Byju's loss on a standalone basis, which includes its K-12 vertical, stood at ₹2,702.14 crore for FY21, as compared to a net profit of ₹7.39 crore during FY20, the company’s recent filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), accessed by market intelligence platform Tofler showed. Byju's revenue from operations also dropped to ₹1,378.51 crore, down from ₹1,918.25 crore during a year before.

While both losses and incomes of Byju’s surged during FY21, its competitors like Vedantu and Unacademy reported a manifold jump in revenues of their consumer facing verticals. The ed-tech company's total standalone income, including other income, stood at ₹1,551.64 crore vs ₹2,242.05 crore during FY20, the data showed. It reported a massive jump in expenditure at ₹4,253.78 crore during FY21 as compared to ₹2,234.66 crore during FY20, the filings showed.

Byju's in a statement in September said its FY21 revenue was around 40% down from what was projected earlier. It said the consolidated loss was ₹4,588.75 crore for FY21, as compared to loss ₹262 crore in the previous fiscal. The revenue stood at ₹2,428 crore vs ₹2,381 crore a year before. At that time, Byju’s had said its auditor Deloitte Haskins & Sells had advised to change in its revenue recognition system, which led to deferring of its revenue for subsequent years.

“There was significant business growth in FY21 over FY20, but since this is the first year where new revenue recognition started because of a COVID-related business model change, almost 40% of the revenue was deferred to subsequent years.”

The recent filing with the RoC shows updated consolidated numbers. The total FY21 consolidated loss stood at ₹4,564.38 crore vs ₹305.50 crore a year before, while the consolidated revenue increased to ₹2,280.26 crore as compared to ₹2,188.99 crore a year before. The consolidated expenditure during FY22 surged manifold to ₹7,027.47 crore as compared to ₹2,873.34 crore during the same period last year.

As per Byju's, the most valued Indian start-up with a valuation of $22 billion, the rationalised growth between FY21 and FY20 is a result of the changes made in the way Byju's recognises its revenue.

Also, the company said it registered nearly ₹10,000 crore in gross revenues in FY22 and that its K-12 education business is showing accelerated growth. Between April-July 2022, the company said it logged revenue of ₹4,530 crore.

Notably, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram in July had written to the government’s serious fraud probe agency, seeking an investigation into the finances of edtech unicorn Byju’s. In a letter to the director of Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), he raised concerns over two funding rounds and a delay in furnishing financial statements for the financial year 2020-21 by Byju's.

The startup has also been in news for layoffs in recent months. It went overboard on acquisitions over the past couple of years, helped by heavy investor funding to the tune of over $2 billion. But earlier this year it laid off about 500 employees working with group companies WhiteHat Jr and Toppr.

On October 12, 2022, the company said, to avoid redundancies and duplication of roles, around 5% of its workforce (around 2,500) is expected to be rationalised across product, content, media, and technology teams.

But now the decacorn says it's working towards achieving group-level profitability by March 2023. On the hiring front, Byju's says it will end this financial year as a net hirer. It has plans to hire 10,000 more teachers in the coming year, adding to its current strength of 20,000 teachers.

The company on Monday announced new fundraising of $250 million from its existing investors and said it is now at that "sweet spot" of its growth story, where its unit economics and the economies of scale, both, are in its favour.